


Winter Hearts

by punkwithametalarm



Category: Frozen (2013), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/M, First Meetings, Imaginary Friends, One Shot, but not really, coldest powers, he ain't imaginary, snow representatives in love, warmest hearts, wow that's cheesy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 10:24:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3525707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkwithametalarm/pseuds/punkwithametalarm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elsa had an imaginary friend, who turned out to not be imaginary at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first published work, my first Frozen fanfiction - and most likely the last as it was a request from a friend. English is not my first language and I'm still learning how to work this website, thought it'd be good to warn you guys. Please leave kudos and comments!

Elsa had an imaginary friend.

                He didn’t show up often, he didn’t follow any sort of pattern either and even as a child, Elsa knew he felt too real to be a figment of her imagination, some sort of escape goat for the loneliness she’d been tossed into after playing with Anna was no longer an option.

                The first time she saw him, it had been only six months after she’d hurt Anna. The gloves were already a constant part of her wardrobe, and yet, still bothered her sometimes. So when there was no one around and the winter had already washed over Arendelle anyway, she liked to take them off and press them to the surface of the lake near the castle. If it was already frozen, a thicker layer of ice would cover it, spreading from her hands. If it wasn’t, Elsa would sit there and wait for it to freeze over until it was sturdy enough for her to walk on it.

                No one went to that lake, ever. It was too close to the castle for the peasants to be comfortable, there were no fish and Anna didn’t enjoy swimming on her own all that much.

                So when she heard the sound of scraping over the ice, as she was on her hands and knees and her hands about to touch the ice already there, Elsa’s immediate fear was understandable. She looked up, and she saw a boy with hair as white as the snow around him, extremely underdressed for the cold, and holding some sort of walking stick with one of its ends curled.

                When he saw her eyes were upon him, he threw his head back and barked out a laugh. “I know you could see me!” he said, and he looked so thrilled and excited Elsa couldn’t help but smile too. He jumped in the air, and Elsa wanted to tell him to _not jump like that over the ice!_ , but incredibly, he didn’t fall, and his bare feet, not purple or frostbitten, gave him a balance he wasn’t supposed to have. He hooked the curled hand of his staff around her and pulled her.

                Elsa thought she was going to fall with her nose against the ice, but instead, her hands found the staff and the boy was sipping in a circle again, on the same place, with Elsa hooked on the other end and slipping.

                “Relax!” he said, eyes bright. “I won’t let you fall!”

                So Elsa did. She locked her legs so they wouldn’t buckle and let the boy spin her around, and it was more fun than she’d expected. The most fun she’d had since what she’d started calling The Accident. Soon enough she was giggling and laughing, and he was laughing too, and they only stopped when he was visibly sore and tired from the physical effort. He used the staff to pull her back into the soft, reliable snow, and Elsa fell down on her butt right (something not proper for a lady, let alone a _princess,_ but she didn’t care) at the edge of it. He was doubled over, laughing, hands on his knees.

                “Who are you?” she asked at last, wiping tears from laughing so hard from her cheeks.

                He smiled, and it was so warm and soft. “Jack Frost.”

 

Although Jack looked older, it was hard to determine how old exactly. Appearance-wise, he could be as old as her mom and dad, or could still be a teenager. But he had a look in his eyes, an innocence in them and a bubbly attitude that reminded Elsa of her little sister. She felt like he was a boy frozen in time, drifting like a lonely ship in the sea.

                He told her so many stories. Anna would’ve loved them, and more than once, Elsa caught herself almost mentioning him at the dinner table, or hovered in front of Anna’s bedroom door, all the stories and jokes and tales caught in her throat. But she would always walk away. The one time she mentioned him to her parents in a low voice, they gently tapped her hand and said nothing. Later on, she overheard their whispers of how she had an imaginary friend, now that she no longer had Anna. She never mentioned him  again.

                But, Jack taught her tricks with her power. He taught her how to make tiny ice castles and a blanket of ice and snow, woven so carefully it looked like cloth. He was, predictably, disappointed when she used that to try and make dresses, but amused.

                Another thing he taught her was how to run on ice like he did. Well, maybe not like _he_ did, because Jack’s feet seemed to have a friction of their own when it came to ice, but he helped her. Elsa could soon run fast over the ice, not tripping or sliding, and they would race together to one point of the lake to another. He’d let her win – sometimes. Sometimes she’d lose and sometimes she’d make a block of ice appear at his feet, tripping him, or blow some snow to give her steadier ground. She was cheating, then, but so was he when he pulled her back with his staff.

                Her hair was always coming loose off its hairdo and her mom didn’t like it, so he found a good solution. He’d cover some strategic bits of her hair with frost, freezing them in place. She liked that trick, and sometimes, she’d use it on her bangs so they wouldn’t fall on her face whenever she was studying or reading.

                And then the snow and ice melted and so did the smile from his face.

                Elsa was heartbroken when he had to leave, but she understood. Summer was no time for a blizzard, and Jack couldn’t keep Arendelle in eternal winter.

                The next year, though, the winter came early – or he did, and Elsa would bet on that one – and he was on the lake once again. He was never waiting on her side, or on the middle of it, but always on the opposite side. She didn’t know why, and suspected that neither did he.

                He came the following year, and the one after that, and the one after that.

                Sometimes Elsa wondered if he was, in fact, just something she was imagining. She decided she didn’t care, because even if Jack wasn’t real, the comfort and fun he gave her certainly wasn’t.

                When her parents died, Elsa only allowed the tears to fall once Anna had been comforted and was sniffling in her sleep. She was not surprised to find Jack perched on the windowsill of her room.

                None of them said anything as she pretty much tackled him into a hug and allowed the first tears to fall. She’d grown, whereas he’d remained the same, like an imaginary friend, but she still didn’t tower over him for much.

                Between chocked sobs, she’d begged him not to leave her, so she wouldn’t lose him like she’d lost Anna and now Mom and Dad, and he promised he wouldn’t be another name of people who’d left in one way or another.

 

On the dreadful  day of her coronation, Jack couldn’t come, and she knew why. It’d be at least two months before the first snow fell, and he was far away. That was alright, she’d told him not to come before the right time no matter what happened. Frightening her subjects – because they were her subjects and she was their _Queen_ , no matter how odd it felt – with an early blizzard would do no one any good. Also, she knew that this was an adventure she’d have to go on alone.

                But she wasn’t alone, not really. She couldn’t freeze patches of the water like that, so quickly, through her covered feet, and there was only one person who could. She heard him from years before, like a whispered promise, _I won’t let you fall,_ followed by a more recent warning just behind her ear, _“Run.”_ So she trusted him and she ran.


End file.
